It has been customary to wrap individual loose (non-set) gem-quality diamonds in so-called diamond papers, which typically are three layers of sheet material folded about two mutually perpendicular sets of axes to enclose the respective individual diamonds.
Conventionally, the outside layer is a sheet of bond paper, the middle layer is a sheet of glassine, and the inner layer is a sheet of light blue glassine. The typical length and width of the papers is 15 cm.times.17 cm, and conventionally, the three layers are superimposed so that their respective edges coincide, and folded sides to middle and convolutely top to bottom, with a single reverse of half an inner panel to provide a package measuring about 4.5 cm.times.8 cm.
Often each diamond, while so packaged, changes hands several times, and each holder may have occasion to open one or more packages that he or she has acquired from various sources, for showing and comparing or selecting various one of the diamonds.
While the diamonds are so packaged, it is difficult for most people to remember which diamond is in which package, and what its shape, quality and price are.
Naturally, some persons in the trade have taken to writing more or less cryptic notations on their packages, for the purpose of providing an indication of what is inside without needing to open the package.
However, if a diamond changes hands while so packaged, it too frequently proves difficult for the new possessor to decipher the notations made on the package by the former possessor or someone earlier in the chain of possession. If the new possessor, in such a circumstance is indolent, perhaps they live with the confusion and occasionally mistake one of their packaged diamonds for another and give a bargain they hadn't meant, or deliver the wrong goods, creating suspicion as to their trustworthiness. But, if they are industrious, they rewrap the diamond in a new package, and mark on it identifying factors that are most meaningful to them. Clearly, if this effort can be avoided, all in the chain of distribution, as a whole, and most individually, will stand to gain.
Further, to the present inventor's knowledge, although some diamond distribution chain members' individual notations doubtless include on their respective packages information about the shape, weight, measurements, clarity, color, price, notable defects and/or other characteristics of a particular diamond, the information certainly is not universally provided, nor provided in a standard format. As a result, when two or more packages are opened concurrently and the diamonds removed, it is all too easy to get the wrong ones back into the respective packages, and difficult to double-check whether such an unintended transposition has occurred.